Beach Adventures

I am still working on getting the pictures of the two seven footers building sand castles. The pictures are on Hope's camera and she is holding them ransom evidently. Speaking of castles, Tyler and I built a wonderful sand castle...sort of. The castle had five levels to it with a sweet room on the top. By the time we got done, we decided it looked more like a prison and joked that not even Sean Connery (in The Rock) could escape our prison. Especially after the amazing moat that we dug out around it. Our girlfriends were sitting up a ways on the beach and so we decided to change the sandcastle. We customized it and made it so that it was a luxurious hotel with one single room on the top overlooking the ocean. We added huge doors on the front and some nice beautiful windows. We then made a road to the ladies so that they could easily get to the beautiful Ritz of a sandcastle we had just built for them. We made a road all the way to their towels and then took them on a tour to their place.

Later on Tyler and Abby went for a walk on the beach. (Yes tall men are more romantic). As Hope and I were now alone I did what any guy would do...I took pictures of the sandcastle as the waves began to overtake it. As I was taking pictures of this huge wave about the crash down on the south, west, and east wall of the sandcastle, Hope started tapping me on the shoulder saying Luke, Luke. I said, "Yeah, I see it. This is going to be the greatest picture in the history of pictures." She kept tapping me more urgently and making sounds louder and louder, but not really entirely words. I then turned to right to see something I have only seen in movies. Well one movie - Twister. There was a giant umbrella about the size of an umbrella that would sit on a back patio table flying through the air and it was about 10 feet from me. I turned to my side to protect Hope...and maybe dodge it. No luck. The pole of this umbrella jabbed me right in my right hip and then rolled on down the beach. Wow, what are the chances.

Speaking of being on the beach. I play an indoor sport and like this year I was on the beach about two days this summer and that will probably be about it. I am tan, but not dark. I burn easily. This year was not as bad as the vacation that Tyler, Cody and I took last summer. We went to Charleston, South Carolina and had to check out of our room that day. So we went out to the beach real early and just stayed - all day. We had a blast, whether it was Cody doing the Heisman to an oncoming wave or it was Tyler and I trying to see who could jump over a wave and stay standing. Mom sent some sunscreen with us. We decided we would help each other put the sunscreen on after we got out to the beach because we didn't want to waste any of our time. Mom is a wise woman. I say that honestly. Now for this instance it is sarcastic. Mom in all her great wisdom sent spray sunscreen because we are big guys and she figured we didn't want to rub that much sunscreen on each other. We have played basketball outside many times. You always have to play the wind. Well, we tried to play the wind with the sunscreen. Cody would shoot it up in the air and I would judge where to run under it and then we would switch. Since Cody decided for the first 5 hours that the sun couldn't touch him and he didn't need sunscreen he was the worst. We had spots on us from the places we had sprayed sunscreen. Cody looked like a diseased cow. It was hilarious, until Tyler and I ended up burnt and eventually blistered a day after him.

So this time on the beach, I had learned my lesson. Hope brought SPF 15 and 30 to the beach. She brought negative 15 I think for her frequent tanning bed self. I was putting tons of lotion on my legs and got comments like that would take of an entire normal person....for a week. I told her I needed good sunscreen. She told me to add 15 and add 30 together and that would make SPF 45, so I would be fine. It's amazing the things you learn when you graduate from college...sort of. It didn't work. She did my back and yep my back was burnt. It's alright though, no blisters and next time we will just buy SPF 45.